Pickup trucks are commonly used to facilitate transportation of cargo items from one location to another. While pickup trucks are available in many sizes and configurations, a typical pickup truck includes a truck bed having a cargo carrying floor that can support cargo, such as lumber, rocks, groceries and/or other items. Because a conventional truck bed is open to the atmosphere, such a truck bed, without protection, is unsuitable to support cargo that is sensitive to theft and/or damage by environmental elements.
For these reasons, certain protective devices such as truck caps, tonneau covers, and toolboxes are in widespread use to protect cargo within a truck bed from weather, dirt and other environmental elements. However, such protective devices tend to reduce the storage and transport capacity of the truck bed. For example, a truck cap or a bed lid, both of which are typically fitted to the sides of a truck bed above the bed floor, significantly limit the use of a truck bed to haul or store tall or wide cargo (that would otherwise fit into a truck bed not fitted with a truck cap or bed lid). Other common protective devices include tonneau covers and toolboxes, but these devices can only protect a limited amount of cargo, and in doing so substantially reduce the truck bed's storage capacity for unprotected cargo. In short, presently  available equipment for protecting cargo in truck beds, such as truck caps, bed lids, tonneau covers and toolboxes, significantly limit the flexibility and cargo carrying capacity of a truck bed.
However, without such protective devices, a conventional pickup truck provides few storage options for cargo that requires protection from theft and/or environmental elements. Consequently, pickup truck users typically must choose between flexibility/capacity and protecting their cargo. Accordingly, there is a need for a pickup truck having a truck bed that is configured to protect certain cargo from theft and from environmental conditions, but that provides the full capacity and flexibility for hauling unprotected cargo as would be provided by a similarly-sized conventional pickup truck having an unprotected truck bed. More particularly, there is a need for a secure and lockable storage location on a pickup truck that substantially protects a spare tire and/or other cargo from theft, moisture and debris, and that facilitates simple and clean access to the spare tire and/or other cargo by an operator of the pickup truck.